Yet the hawk with the wildness untamed in his eye,
If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the sky;
The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain

Will turn for a moment and look at his chain.

Our parting is not as the friendship of years,

That chokes with the blessing it speaks through its tears; We have walked in a garden, and, looking around, Have plucked a few leaves from the myrtles we found.

But now at the gate of the garden we stand,

And the moment has come for unclasping the hand;
Will you drop it like lead, and in silence retreat
Like the twenty crushed forms from an omnibus seat?

Nay! hold it one moment, the last we may share, -
I stretch it in kindness, and not for my fare;
You may pass through the doorway in rank or in file,
If your ticket from Nature is stamped with a smile.

For the sweetest of smiles is the smile as we part,
When the light round the lips is a ray from the heart;
And lest a stray tear from its fountain might swell,
We will seal the bright spring with a quiet farewell.

THE HUDSON.

AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY.

"T WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn, Ere the curtain that covered life's day-star was drawn; The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long, And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song.

"There flows a fair stream by the hills of the west,"
She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast;
"Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played;
Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid."

I wandered afar from the land of my birth,
I saw the old rivers, renowned upon earth,
But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream
With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream.

I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine, Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change it to

wine;

I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they glide

Still whisper his glory who sleeps at their side.

But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the

waves

That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves;

If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear,

I care not who sees it,

no blush for it here!

Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of the West!

I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast;
Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold,

Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled !

DECEMBER, 1854.

A flattering letter-more's the pity,

By some contriving junto planned,

And signed per order of Committee;

It touches every tenderest spot,

My patriotic predilections,

My well known

something-don't ask what,

My poor old songs, my kind affections.

They make a feast on Thursday next,
And hope to make the feasters merry;
They own they're something more perplexed
For poets than for port and sherry ;-
They want the men of— (word torn out);

Our friends will come with anxious faces

(To see our blankets off, no doubt,

And trot us out and show our paces).

They hint that papers by the score

Are rather musty kind of rations;

They don't exactly mean a bore,

But only trying to the patience; That such as you know who I mean — Distinguished for their - what d'ye call 'em Should bring the dews of Hippocrene

To sprinkle on the faces solemn.

The same old story; that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties; Upon my soul, it makes me laugh

To read these letters from Committees ! They're all so loving and so fair,—

All for your sake such kind compunction, — 'T would save your carriage half its wear To touch its wheels with such an unction!

Why, who am I, to lift me here

And beg such learned folk to listen, –

To ask a smile, or coax a tear

Beneath these stoic lids to glisten?

H